


Visit to Guernica

by sprinkles888



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Boy King of Hell Sam Winchester, Canon-Typical Violence, Experimental Style, Gen, Gen Work, Literary References & Allusions, Post-Episode: s14e20 Moriah, Sam Winchester Angst, Sam Winchester Bingo, Sam Winchester-centric, Season/Series 15 Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-11 16:53:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19931353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sprinkles888/pseuds/sprinkles888
Summary: Chuck turns out the sun, unleashes Hell upon them. The demons come. Sam says no.And then he says yes.The crown weighs heavy, but then, so does the end of the world.





	Visit to Guernica

**Author's Note:**

> **Sam Winchester Bingo Square: Boy King of Hell!Sam**
> 
> Title is from Picasso's famous piece, titled "Guernica," an artwork inspired by the terror bombing of Guernica, Spain, which occurred not long before the start of WW2. Take a look at the painting sometime through google, if you feel like it.
> 
> As always, many thanks to my beta, Kenz, for cheerleading, cajoling, and correcting me. <3
> 
> ♦ written during the summer hiatus before s15 ♦

The first wave is the zombie hoard Chuck unleashes upon them in that graveyard. Surrounded, bleeding, in shock, Sam wonders if Chuck made it so on purpose, because that's right at home for them. Has been for a while. Maybe Chuck thinks it's a motif.

(He's supposed to be the Winchester who thinks things through. Playing his role, just like he was always told to do. He wasn't thinking things through when he aimed that gun. All he knew, all he knows, is that Chuck deserved it. Jack didn't.)

Sam braces himself, with Dean and Cas on either side, and that's all he can do. Hold on, try not to bleed out, go out in a way befitting a Winchester, a hunter—blood and dirt and pain and cussing out an ambivalent God the whole way through.

The second wave is the demons. Smoke without the mirrors, because the smoke is the mirror, the one Sam's been staring into since he was size 6M in infant clothing.

If they were surrounded before, now they are drowning in the Mariana Trench, 30,000 feet below sea level.

(Dean had asked once, how long a league was, how even in fiction, something could go that deep. Sam told him about how the Nautilus' journey was through the sea, not into it. That it was never about how far down, but how long across, and Dean complained about misleading titles.

 _Baruch HaShem_ , Sam thinks wildly.)

Sam can't swing the iron bar in his hand, for fear of hitting a brother's flesh instead of corpse, because the smoke is too thick, thick enough to send everything into pitch. Sam curls into himself, presses against his bullet wound, and reminds himself that he's seen darker things. Outside the cage, when he'd been allowed to look between the parts of it that Sam's mind had told him were bars, it'd been void. Black in the truest sense, a place that had never known light existed before the Morning Star was confined there.

So maybe that's why when the smoke chokes him, the gritty, twisted, evil souls, Sam doesn't fight back. There is gray in this smoke, or at the least, parts where light can filter through.

He doesn't fight. He listens.

Sometimes, you could hear them. Down in the cage. When He would fume and turn to his angelic brother in anger instead of Sam. When He let Sam keep his sense of hearing.

Demons. Human souls. Screaming. The sounds of torture. Far off.

In the dead of night, when the only thing that seems real is the heaviness of his organs and limbs, Sam wonders if Lucifer was different before.

Before his father threw him away, to live alone, isolated, hearing only the sounds of pain and suffering and anguish and the prayers of the diseased, demonic beings who waited for Him.

So, in the here, in the now, in a forsaken graveyard (in a forsaken world), Sam listens.

They talk of freedom, in the tongues of earth. It's an awful rejoicing, a filthy hallelujah. (Praise Chuck, praise the one who freed the antithesis of humanity from its chains.)

And they talk of birthright, of succession, of leadership and direction.

Sam falls to his knees, begs, "No," aloud. Hears only the screams of Hell in return. Stares up, watches the swirling smoke twist round and round like a fan in a panic room.

(He thinks that sometimes, the Cage was better than the panic room. At least in the bowels of Hell, pain made sense in a way it never had at Bobby's house.)

"Do you rescind your order?" Comes the question.

And Sam thinks about the anger that had pulsed through him, the disgust, when they said they needed a new King.

"No," He repeats. He thinks maybe it's the only word he knows how to say. He said it again and again, in the dreams. In the Cage.

The demons wail restlessly. Sam's ears pop.

He swallows, cottonmouth, picks up his English from the scattered shelving of his psyche, and says, "Enough."

The world stills on its stilts, precarious, already falling. The demons slow, quiet their weeping and wailing and gnashing, so when Sam chokes out, "Leave," it sounds deafening.

A continuous roar of discontent and fury sounds as Sam's voice echoes, and the swirls of venom sing into action, twisting round and round Sam in an awful parody of a merry-go-round at the carnival. Sam clutches his own arms, crossing them in a mimicry of prayer as he kneels in front of the displaced denizens of Hell.

And the cloud disperses, explodes, and Sam watches as slithering smoke takes off in all directions. He breathes, chokes on the taste of sulfur on his palate.

"Sam," croaks Dean, standing over him, reaching out a hand to grab at Sam's shoulder. Eyes meet, Winchester brand exhaustion. Bodies are spread across the boneyard, unmoving. Jack's is one of them. Sam turns to stare at burnt-out eyes, thinks about their prophet, just a boy who wanted to change the world for the better.

"The demons," Castiel, Angel of Somebody and Something, says, "they . . . Stopped the attackers."

"Why the hell would they do that?" Dean questions, turning to stare at Cas, "And why would they just up and desert?"

"Because I told them to," Sam says, low, secret-like. He puts one hand down on the grass, stares at his cracked cuticles.

He can hear the intake of air that's supposed to lead to Dean's explosion, but a groaning from the pile of bodies interrupts. Three pairs of eyes (plus the others Sam assumes Cas must have, the ones of a true angelic face) glance toward the sound.

"The Bunker," Dean says, dropping his zombie-bashing-stick to the ground, "Let's go."

* * *

Of all the things to happen today, Sam is perhaps least surprised to find the Bunker destroyed. It was the first thing he expected Chuck to do. He watches Dean exit his car to stand in front of the rubble-filled doorway. He reads the agony Dean's experiencing in the taught draw of his shoulders. He looks away, feels hurt only for the fact that they can't take Jack back home one last time.

He'd spent the tense, lonesome ride in the blue car glancing in the rear-view every minute, to make sure nothing had happened to Jack's body.

(He didn't have to fight as hard as he thought he might to earn the right to bring Jack in his car. Cas carried the body. Sam wrapped him in his jacket. Dean wrapped Sam's bullet wound. They aimed for Lebanon, trailing hell-spawn in their wake.)

Dean pushes Cas. Shoves him, hard. Cas frowns, looks back to Sam. Sam drops his gaze to the steering wheel.

A destroyed home. Again. Sam thinks Chuck likes circular plots. The hero's journey. Freytag's Pyramid.

He tells himself it's not the end.

(But if God says so, isn't it?)

He's got his kid, dead in the backseat, their only hope (their home) destroyed. He's got a brother who's hurt.

He's got a sun that's just . . . gone. They're in darkness.

He's got nothing.

(Even Lucifer gave him something, sometimes, just so he could take it away.)

* * *

Chuck left the cell towers and radios running, so they hear the news. The internet explodes with freak deaths. Jody calls, Donna too.

They do what they have to.

(Sam speaks again for the first time when Dean says they have to burn him. He says, "No," and goes to dig a grave. Out in the woods, by the remnants of the Bunker. Jack liked it out there, Sam thinks.)

And then they're off. Angel in the backseat, radio talking about the sudden blotting out of the sun.

Bloody Mary's back in Toledo. Sam checks the news on a gut feeling and finds the news about a crash on a bridge in Jericho.

He gets sick on the side of the road. Dean doesn't ask him about the demons. Cas does, when Dean's passed out because he took a blow to the head when they returned to the _Of Mice and Men_ Buruburu case at that old lumber mill and found not a hulking man to drag along the road, but a foaming-at-the-mouth jealous husband to dig and burn.

Sam tells Cas the truth. He's still got a claim to the throne. Cas already knows. They don't talk about it again.

Until the demons show up.

They're in Luna County, New Mexico. Way, way, back in the day, back when Sam thought maybe someone would care about his prayers, they’d salt-and-burned the ghost of an out-for-blood border patrol agent here. He’d come back, just as angry, but like so many of the other things they’re facing, they had to perform a summoning and binding ritual instead of moving the guy along, because now there is no _along_. Dean had shouted around guilt and blame for two hours after. Bela Talbot shows up, black-eyed.

"Where'd you get the body?" Sam asks, tiredly, as she and her lackeys surround him, alone, on the way back to the motel after scrounging up all the motivation he had left after running circles around a pissed-off, fear-monger ghost to pick up some badly needed food.

"Oh, this?" Bela says, smiling, "I crawled out of my own grave. Quite an adventure."

"What do you want?" Sam says, staring, straining not to sigh.

"What, no 'hello, Bela, good to see you, sorry me and my equally idiotic brother couldn't save your life?'"

Sam can't think. He hasn't slept. He doesn't even remember if they tried to save her. He knows that his Cage memories have her blaming him for her death, so long ago.

"Fine," Bela says, backing up enough for Sam to catch a breath, "we need you."

"No," Sam says, pushing away. One of the other demons grabs him and slams him against the alley wall.

"I'm afraid that's not the answer I was looking for," Bela says, "Hell needs a ruler, even when Hell is a bit more upstairs now."

"And it's not going to be me," Sam says, closing his eyes for a beat too long.

"Oh," Bela says, "So you'd rather Azazel continue his takeover?"

Sam snaps to attention, can't help it, even as the sun refuses to shine at ten in the morning.

"See, I knew that'd get your attention," Bela smirks, shares looks with the other demons.

Jittery from coffee and life, Sam twitches away from the demon's hold on him.

"Or," Bela continues, "maybe Lilith is your cup of tea?"

Sam hasn’t eaten anything since Iowa, where a gas station clerk, probably not even twenty-two, tossed him a burrito and said, “Hey, if it’s the end of the world, might as well clear out our stock.”

His stomach still tells him he should heave.

Sam swallows it down (like he swallows down hurt and guilt and hate and demon blood) and shakes his head in silence.

“Good,” says Bela, “Always knew you were the one with an ounce of sense.”

(In Genesis, Esau sells his birthright for stew. In an alleyway, littered with needles and glass, Sam Winchester accepts his.)

“Boy King,” says the demon who’d hovered over Bela’s shoulder.

“Boy King,” Bela repeats, smiling. The three demons kneel. Sam furrows his brow.

“Not exactly a boy,” Sam’s mouth says, too far removed from his frog-legged brain. He feels something spark in his veins. Looks at the demons and sees their true faces. (Doesn’t flinch back, because compared to Lucifer, they’re a downright Sistine Chapel sight.)

The demon to his left is ancient, and Sam can feel it in his molars. He looks up at Sam, smirks, flashes eyes with a glint of red.

“Old translation,” the demon says, “a little bit wrong. Didn’t you ever study Enochian, Winchester?”

Sam pushes back the hair from his face and flips the words over and over in his brain, to the language of the Cage and back again. Angelic language had no need to specify between human-man and human-boy, so there is little difference. The greater need for words to fill became the distinction between Heaven, and Hell, and Earthly things.

“The King of Hell Who is of the Earth and not of Flame,” says the old demon, the fallen one, in the tongue of the ancient, “the Boy-King.”

(Sam read the _Chronicles of Narnia_ for the first time in Blue Earth, Minnesota, age eleven. Pastor Jim kept them for him, neatly ordered on a shelf. Sam always liked to imagine going somewhere where someone called him a Son of Adam.)

Sam swallows, asks in English, “What is the King of Hell without his throne?”

“Your supporters have gathered at the Gate,” says Bela, rising to vessel-feet, “They’re waiting for your orders.”

Power pulses through Sam’s nervous system, bleeds out through his fingernails. The power of Hell was always in the souls, not the racks, and now the souls are in the up-above, power leaking through their binding ties to sulphur and ash. Sam wonders what happened to Purgatory, thinks that maybe some of the things they’ve killed should’ve gone _there_ , not to Hell. Maybe He-Who-Turned-Out-The-Sun cracked that one open too.

“I’ll get there as soon as I can,” Sam says, shoulders back and jaw tight.

The three demons nod, then vanish into clouds of smoke.

Sam stumbles, Bambi feet, hits a wall. His hands touch brick and come back sticky with something he hopes is just chewed gum.

He breathes in the polluted air, feels the weight of a Hellfire crown on his head, and picks up the grocery bag with beer and Marie Callender’s Cheesy Chicken and Rice frozen dinners. Two-block walk and he shoves open a motel door to find his bruised-bloody brother cleaning guns and a faithless angel watching shove-the-bad-down-viewers-throats newshour. He drops the food on the bed.

Says, all lip-wobble, “I’m going to Wyoming.”

“What’s in Wyoming?” Asks Dean, exhaustion eyes and pickled-liver breath.

Cas turns, sees Sam, goes wide-eyed, and says, “No.”

“The Gate to Hell,” Sam says, turning away from blue-eyed, many-eyed horror, “and some demons.”

Dean goes snow-cone frozen on his motel-wobble chair.

“You took the crown,” Cas growls. He’s been the only one of them who can muster up righteous anger.

Sam chokes on spit, coughs, hangs his head.

“What,” Dean bites out, not inflected for a question.

“They’re back,” Sam says, slumping to sit next to the groceries, spilling out of their bag, “all of them. Lilith. Azazel. I have to stop them”

“And you thought that _now_ was the time—” Dean says, finally gathering that revulsion that Sam was waiting for.

“No,” Sam says, hangdog neck and eyes, “but _they’re_ back.”

He catches Dean’s glare, holds the contact, “Azazel. Lilith. More.”

That takes the hot air out of Dean’s balloon and he drops back down to his seat, which creaks in the sudden, wool-blanket-kind-of silence.

“Huh,” Dean says.

Cas stares between them.

Sam digs his fingernails into his palm, blinks away the continuous, haunting image of Jack rolling in pain, of Dean locking the box, of the ceiling fan that spun round and round above his head. Breathes. Thinks that maybe the Bible they’ve been reading really _has_ been Poisonwood this whole time, and it was just all lost in translation.

“Writers lie,” Cas says, repeating himself from earlier that morning, and the night before, and every single day since Chuck snapped.

Sam listens to it this time, really hears the phrase, scowls, and thinks back to his literature course back in sophomore year at nearly-always-sunny-Stanford, and says, “Good writers don’t. Good writers expose the truth.”

“You’re the new Crowley, huh?” Dean asks, tipping more gun oil onto his cleaning cloth.

“Maybe Metatron did know _some_ things,” Cas says, and Sam feels like he’s listening to two different conversations on two different channels on a fading-out walkie-talkie.

“I’m going to Wyoming,” Sam says, pretending he knows what the word decisive feels like.

Cas clears a gravel-gargle throat and says, “And I’m going to Reno.”

Dean freezes, jaw locking in place, and Sam thinks about losing things and losing people and how Dean’s never ever been good at dealing with it. At being alone.

“Reno?” Sam questions.

“Chuck said that was where Amara was.”

“Oh, so you’ve been going on and on about how Chuck’s a liar this whole time, and _now_ you think he’s, what, telling the truth about his sister? Who might not even be real?” Dean’s bitter and sour and Sam knows he’s the one who made him that way.

“It was a good detail,” Cas says, “and God—Chuck, is not a good writer. It may be the truth.”

“So what,” Dean growls, “you think she’s just been shooting craps this whole time while the end of the damn world rages around her?”

Cas gets puffed up, clenching his jaw in a way that reminds Sam of his mo—of Mary.

“So you have a better idea? Because the way I see it, we’re just plugging the holes in the dam with our fingers and it keeps springing new ones,” Cas says, and Sam wonders what happened to metaphors-don’t-make-sense-Castiel from the early days.

“We’re saving people!” Dean’s shouting now, gun dropped on the table and chair pushed back, askew.

Sam wrings his hands, twists his fingers together and remembers playing _here is the church, here is the steeple_ with Pastor Jim that time when Dean had the flu, and sort of feels like crying, even though he hasn’t since he was digging Jack’s grave, accompanied only by his tears.

“Nothing is going to be enough to save them unless we find a way to stop Chuck,” Cas argues.

Dean takes a step toward Cas, and Sam flinches back, and then shrinks away from the door when several pounding knocks hit it.

The three of them exchange looks and then Dean moves toward it, sliding his Colt behind his back.

Dean undoes the chain, shares a look with Sam at the absence of a peephole (cruddy, cheap motel, the story of their lives), and then twists the handle. Four things happen, within an instant.

One—the door slams open with the force of a kick.

Two—someone shouts, “Police! Down on the ground, hands behind your head!”

Three—Cas stands and the dim fluorescents catch on his angel blade.

Four—Sam holds out a hand.

Inhale through the nose, close eyes, feel for the demon—no, the souls. He’s done this. He knows this. He pulls on the burning in his chest, pushes back. Opens his eyes to find the officers on the ground, held there by the weight of Hell.

Dean turns and grabs the bags, not questioning it. Cas glances at Sam, and then starts shoving weapons into their duffle from Dean’s cleaning piles. Sam keeps his hand steady, waits for a drip from his nose that never comes. Feels that prickling weight press into his brow.

Only when they’ve sped out of the parking lot does Sam drop his hand. He forces himself to breathe. Chokes on his breath. Splutters, gets spit on the dash. Gets Dean’s hand to his back, pounding.

The look Dean shares with Cas, a long glance in the rearview, is enough to make Sam sick. He forces it down, reminds himself that there’s nothing in his stomach in the first place.

* * *

An hour in the car, all of them tense and waiting for red-blue-red-blue flashes, and Dean remembers, “Damn, didn’t grab the food.”

There’s a sudden release of tension among the three, a collective still-alive-not-yet-in-jail celebration that consists only of relaxed shoulders and a barely-there sigh from each of them.

And Sam’s body suddenly (finally) remembers that the only reason they’d stopped at Motel McDumpster-Fire was to eat and catch a couple hours. Sinks in his seat, eyes already closing.

“Should he . . ?” Dean questions after a couple of minutes of _Seals & Crofts_, quiet enough that Sam has to strain his foggy, one-more-moment-and-we’ll-be-asleep brain to hear it.

“I don’t know,” Cas says, “there has never been a human King of Hell. He still has his soul, so I suppose . . .”

Sam is half a split-end hair away from drifting off when Dean’s hand meets his hair, ruffling just enough to not be classified as a gentle stroke, and his brother says, in a too-close-to-fond tone Sam will never feel worthy of, especially after today, “He always was good at the impossible.”

* * *

In Arizona, Castiel, Angel-of-Nobody-and-Nothing, eyes up the parking lot across the street from the gas station they’re paying end-of-world pricing at. It’s a look Sam would say is appraising. His gut drops at the same time the pump thumps and he squeezes the handle just a couple more times, hopes for an even number to shine back at him. It doesn’t. He puts the hose back and doesn’t bother to get a receipt.

Dean returns, laden with the last vestiges of gas station junk food to be found. Uncertainty plays around his mouth—like kids on a jungle gym—when Cas exits the back seat.

“I’m going to Reno,” Cas says, just like Sam knew he would say.

Dean knew it was coming too. There’s a silent battle in his eyes, and for a brief, absurd moment, Sam thinks his brother might just cry right here and now in a gas station lot. But Dean’s Dean, for better or worse or ultimately worst, and he sets his jaw cement-like, dumps his armful of things, and says, “Can’t stop you, huh?”

Cas shakes his head, and Sam thinks that if he were himself, if he didn’t have the heavy weight of Hell on his back again, he’d check in with Cas. Tell him it’s okay to lose faith. Tell him Sam’s right there with him. Tell him he’d rather Cas stay with them until he absolutely, finally, truly can’t.

Instead, with hands wrapped round each other on the top of the car as he looks at one of the only people left in the world he can call family across the yawning distance, Sam questions, “You sure?”

World-weary vessel eyes stare back at him, and Cas nods, “I am certain. If there is any chance . . .” arms fling out, helpless in their manner, “If there is _anything_ , I must search it out.”

For a moment, only the outside-sounds can be heard—the people, the cars, the traffic that is still around even though the sun’s gone out and shouldn’t people be more worried? shouldn’t there be riots and calamities raging?—and then Dean sighs a burden-dragging sigh and says, “Okay.”

A car horn honks at the closest intersection, and when Cas looks to Sam, all he can do is try to muster up a crooked-Campbell grin and nod like he understands that kind of driving motivation.

(He remembers it. Doesn’t understand it. Isn’t that person anymore.)

(The sulphur in his lungs burns, smoulders. This, the weight of the crown, it wasn’t for the world. It was for Dean. For Jack. For the people Sam cares about.

Maybe it _was_ for the world. His world. The one he believes in. The one where free will and choice have meaning.)

Castiel doesn’t have much to take with him. A vessel, with a coat, and a few things in his pockets—scammed credit card, beat-up cell phone, a few scrunched-up dollars Sam finds for him in the glovebox. Sam can’t stretch the time out, doesn’t have that power (doesn’t _think_ he does, at least) so he holds out his arms and hugs Castiel. Thinks about going crazy and Lucifer and what it’s like to have your faith ripped out from under you and squeezes tight. Wishes . . . Wants. Lets go, even though he really doesn’t want to.

Slides into the passenger seat and watches Dean and Cas embrace out of the corner of his eye. Pretends not to see how Dean’s hands clench on the steering wheel when Dean gets in the car and jams jangling keys into the ignition.

They leave an angel in the rearview. Dean drives, music off, for a few miles, and then idles at a turn with no one behind them.

“How soon?” Dean asks.

And Sam completes the mad-libs sentence— _How soon do you have to be in Wyoming? How soon do I have to lose you too?_

“Soon,” Sam says.

“A day,” Dean says, “Just one.” Voice breaks, “Please.”

They were in Arizona when Sam first read about Ponyboy and Sodapop and Johnny, sometime when he was about thirteen or fifteen and learning how to bite back at the world when it dug its teeth it. Sam remembers it, because it was a dry-hot summer and he thought too much about whether or not Dean would like the book. He’d left it on Dean’s bed. Didn’t hear back about it out loud, but he knows the book got dog-earred and finger-smudgy because he saw it in Dean’s hands so many times after that.

He knows what Dean’s asking. He wants more time. Sam wants more time. Dean memorized Frost before Sam did, he thought the poem had more weight than Sam wanted it to. Quoted it at Sam a couple times, just to show-off that dropping out hadn’t ruined his brain power.

( _But only so an hour.)_

“Okay,” Sam says, quietly, “Okay.”

* * *

Even without the sun to show it off, the Grand Canyon is inexplicably beautiful. Sam almost forgot that things could be beautiful.

He thinks Chuck did too.

They don’t talk. It’s not star-gazing, because it’s been cloudy everywhere since the sun went out, but it’s something. Sam likes the stars because they remind him how small he is in this great big turtle-shell universe.

After everything, he wants that reminder more than ever.

“You remember,” Dean starts, no warning, “when I met with Death that one time? When he gave me his ring?”

“Yeah,” Sam says, distantly, eyes staring at the ridges in the black-white-sketched canyon in front of them.

“He said that one day, someday, God would die too,” Dean says it the same way he orders bacon cheeseburgers or reads the paper aloud.

Sam thinks on that a while, nudges his shoulder up against Dean’s, “Then maybe we should hold onto hope.”

“Why’d you do it? Decide to start leading Hell?” Dean poses the question like it’s that simple of a matter. And maybe it is.

Sam fiddles with the button on the sleeve of his flannel, “They’re up here, causing havoc. If I can do anything to stop that—”

Dean shoves at Sam’s shoulder, pushes him back a step, then follows, in that realm of too-close that Dean is allowed to invade, “Cut the crap, Sam.”

Sam recenters his balance, stares Dean down. Decides that if he doesn’t know what’s going to happen next, he doesn’t want to spend this time arguing. He’s tired of it. He’s just so tired.

“If Azazel and Lilith are back, that means others probably are,” he explains, “and I’m not letting _them_ near you.”

Dean’s eyes close, understanding the underlying _Alistair, Ruby, Asmodeus._ Why would Chuck stop there? All kinds of things that should be dead, that _were_ dead, that were dead and _gone_ are back. And a terrifying amount of them have reason to hate the Winchesters.

Sagging, head bowed, Dean reaches up a hand. Grasps at Sam’s shoulder. Sam leans in, hunches down. Foreheads meet.

“So,” Dean says, eyes still closed, “this is the real end, huh?”

“We keep saying that,” Sam says, “and then we change it.”

Dean’s voice is a little too shaky, “This time’s different.”

“Yeah,” Sam breathes, staring at the flames behind his eyelids.

Off in the distance, a wolf shouts anger at the moon-ridden sky. Or maybe a coyote. Sam doesn’t know the difference in their howls.

Dean leans back, keeps his hand on Sam’s shoulder, opens his eyes.

“I believe in us,” he says, “that’s what you said. You believe in us.”

“Yeah,” Sam says, and maybe it’s that reminder, that even though the odds keep growing in the wrong direction, even though the stakes get higher and higher, Sam really does believe in them. He believes in Dean. He believes in the power of people working together.

“I believe in us,” Sam repeats.

“Okay,” Dean says. And that’s that.

* * *

The Impala still rumbles her rumble, still growls when Dean pushes down with his lead foot, still carries them forward. Without the sun, it gets a little chilly. The legos rattle when Dean flicks on the heat.

“You need a suit,” Dean says, as they hurtle down a constant passing lane asphalt highway.

Sam frowns, looks up from the tablet that bears all kinds of world-ending news, “I have a suit.”

“You need a _good_ suit,” Dean clarifies. “If you’re gonna be leading a—a demon army, you gotta look good doing it.”

So, surrounded by the red-rock valleys of Utah, they walk into a suit and slacks store. The guy at the front desk looks surprised to have customers, and Sam assumes he’s had not-so-great business since the whole sun-snuffed-out-like-a-candle ordeal. But, true to customer-service rules, Sam gets fitted. While they’re waiting, Dean snaps at him for glancing at an absurdly white tux, of all things, and Sam’s taken aback enough to remind Dean that, _no_ , he’s not getting something that’s gonna get dirty in _five-freaking-seconds._ He’s not an idiot.

(The shoulder that still twinges from the bullet he shot at God disagrees, but Dean stares at him weirdly for a long time and then snorts and implies _guess you’re not_ in the way he shrugs his shoulders.)

Sam’s almost done with his purchase, when suddenly Dean says, “Hey, I think I might need a suit too.”

“What?” Sam asks, spinning, “What for?” They’re buying these on some unfamiliar soul’s credit, and even after all these years, Sam feels guilty over it.

Dean gets that shifty, slick look in his eyes that means he’s about to lie, but isn’t going to hide that fact.

“You know FBI’s the easiest cover we got,” Dean says, a lying liar who lies, “and my other one’s got those holes in it from Hookman, remember?”

Sam stares at Dean, waits to feel upset over Dean not trusting him, but just continues to feel numb. He shakes his head at his brother and reclaims his seat. He doesn’t want to fight, not when they’re both the last things left for each other to cling to as they slide into the void.

* * *

They drop off their purchases in the car and Dean drags Sam over to a could-fall-down-any-second diner where they serve up portions so big that even Dean is overwhelmed, and they end up with take-home boxes and that too-full feeling that’s just this edge of uncomfortable.

Rock music blasts out of the speakers as they speed out of town, AC/DC, Zep, and Dean shouts along, and hits Sam’s shoulder until he joins in.

And that’s how they spend the six hour trip to Fossil Butte. They don’t talk about it, not in silver-dish words, they just yell at the world and at God from their car, from the most important car to ever drive these dusty state-border roads.

Dead or Alive is up next on the tape when Dean rewinds it, and they both grin deep, sick grins at each other and yell the lyrics until their throats scratch up-down on every swallow. They skirt the Rockies, best they can, go the long way around through Colorado and nearly mow down a couple deer. Dean’s face as they screech to a halt makes Sam deep-gut laugh like he’s some kind of mall Santa that thinks a belly laugh needs to include snorts and choking noises. He laughs and Dean laughs and they both cry tears they can convince themselves are of the happy variety.

* * *

When a _Welcome to Wyoming_ sign looms up ahead, painted bright and cheerful, Sam can only see it as ominous. Dangerous. Cows outside the window huddle together like they know who’s riding shotgun in the car speeding past.

It’s like a hand painted picture on a jar of honey, a sweet temptation that could lead to ruin or freedom. Sam wonders if he’ll find safety at the end of his trip, because he knows he’s not about to find answers to who his mother was, despite all the questions and longing he’s got in his gray matter.

A old-green-familiar sign tells them that Fossil Butte is seventeen miles away, and Dean takes out the tape to toss in the water-damaged cardboard box underneath the seat.

They drive in the cricket-noise-quiet. A couple of headlights flash through the windshield. Then Dean breathes deep, and Sam jumps in, interrupting.

“You could come, you know,” he says. It’s more of an obligation to say it. He knows he’d hate it.

He knows some of what’s ahead.

Dean puffs out air, and closes his eyes. Sam snaps his head forward to watch the road while he does so, the practice of so many years of claiming shotgun responsibilities weighing on his every action.

“Sam,” Dean says, like it hurts more than just the tickle in his throat from singing along, “I can’t.”

The motor still rumbles, the road still goes by, they still are kicking up everything and going everywhere.

“I know,” Sam says, voice small as he leans back, crooks up his knees so they settle lounge-relaxed against the dash.

“C’mon,” Dean says, “you’ll do fine. You’ve got that whole,” he gestures vaguely at Sam, “leader thing going on. Couple o’ demons ain’t even gonna rock the tugboat.”

Sam snorts and glances out the window. Wonders if the scenery feels familiar because he’s remembering all those years ago, or if everywhere just starts to look familiar if you travel it enough.

Everything about him is heavy. Rain boots filled with water, boat with a hole, grave dirt over a coffin, shopping cart with everything important. It’s not fair. It won’t ever be.

He’d never finished a McCarthy book. Never will, now that God’s said it’s not worth it, never has been. It doesn’t really matter, Sam supposes, in the end. At the End.

“Sammy,” Dean says, “don’t make me chick-flick this.”

Sam cracks a smile, glances over to meet wet eyes with his own and says, “Okay.”

They eat up seventeen miles in no time at all.

(In the only time that matters.)

* * *

Dean dusts off Sam's shoulders, adjusts his tie like there was something wrong in the first place, and calls him “Bitch.”

“Jerk,” Sam says in reply (always in reply, always the answer or waiting for its partner-pair).

And he crosses the train tracks (pretends he doesn’t look back).

* * *

Bela greets him. Demons surround him. Sam settles the invisible mantle across his shoulders, stands tall, and decides that he’s doing this right.

“Azazel,” he calls, as he nears the gate, side-stepping open graves, “Show your face.”

“Sure you want me to do that, boy?” says Azazel, who slinks out from behind the crowd, pressing in, heavy body-vessel weight.

Sam looks him in the face, the ugly, tortured, demonic face, presses his lips together and raises his eyebrows. Says nothing more, just stares down the catalyst to everything wrong in his life.

“Sam,” says another voice, to his left, and there she is. It’s Ruby. Different vessel, but Sam can tell. He knows her, knows her stench.

He doesn’t take his eyes off of Azazel, but he does acknowledge Ruby. Glances at her, then promptly turns back.

“You may address me as King,” he says, channeling every smarmy Crowley-esque attitude trick he can muster.

Bela stands at his left hand, the old demon from the alley to his right. Sam locks his spine, and rolls his shoulders back. The movement, practiced for a full two-minutes before he left Dean, exposes the knife strapped casually against his leg. A few of the demons at the front of the mass push back, nervous.

Azazel laughs, says, “Haven’t we already been through this before, Sam?”

Sam tilts his head, smiles knowingly, “You’ve been gone a long time, Yellow-Eyes. Things have changed. So, I would recommend you show me some respect.”

“Sammy, Sammy, Sammy,” the demon purrs, “you ought to understand, you have no claim to that crown.”

“Lucifer would beg to differ,” Sam says, and a quiet murmur swims through the crowd.

“I may have been gone,” Azazel says, “but even I know Lucifer’s dead.”

Sam swallows down disgust and hatred and self-loathing and tilts his head, just so, the way he’d trained himself out of because he’d never been able to look at it the same way after all the time Lucifer spent staring in mirrors. “You sure about that?” He says, smirking.

Azazel’s grin drops, and Sam can feel him press threatening smoke-hands against his followers throats, those demons who looked every bit as confident as Azazel at the beginning, now with doubt scattered across their faces.

Sam exhales slowly, smirks, “See,” he says, moving to pace a step, and the gathered demons flinch back, “I’d say, between the two of us, I have a greater claim to the throne. Now, we could dispute this, start a whole war over it. Campaign and backstab and all that entails. But, I think we’re all tired of that, aren’t we?” He glances over the fidgeting crowd, cocks an expectant brow.

There’s a murmured, “Yes,” that surrounds him, with a few louder calls of, “One King!” and “Boy King.”

Turning back, he paces the opposite direction, reminds himself not to choke on the brimstone in his throat, and stares down Azazel’s supporters. Azazel himself is frozen, a smile permanently stuck on his face.

“I think,” Sam says, “It’d be better to settle this, here and now.”

So he does.

Chuck liked circles, Sam thinks. Liked motifs and recurring themes. But this, _this_ , isn’t Chuck’s doing. This is Sam’s. This is his choice. Not Ruby’s. Not Dean’s. Not Lucifer’s.

 _His_.

(It doesn’t mean he likes it. It really means he hates it above everything else.)

Knife goes to Azazel’s face, scrapes sharp along his cheek, and Sam draws back, tilts his head curiously, and licks the blade.

The smouldering brimstone stays smouldering. The demons rustle restlessly. Azazel brings his hand up to his cheek.

It was never the blood. It was never the crown.

Sam glances at Ruby, smiles his best knowing smile, and holds out a hand.

Azazel and Ruby both fall, worship-knees. They choke and wheeze and Sam _squeezes_.

* * *

In the after, Sam questions his audience, sing-song, “Where does a demon twice dead go?”

* * *

Bela and company lead him to a hotel, nice enough if one can ignore how every single worker there is black-eyed.

“You did well,” Bela says, crossing her arms as Sam sits, slumps into a chair.

Sam snorts, “Don’t have to seem so surprised about it.”

The other demon, not the old one, not Bela, is young and as nervous as a demon can be. Sam looks at him. Sighs a heavy-fog sigh, and says, “I’m not going to kill you or drink your blood,” thinks about that for a moment, adds a caveat, “Unless you piss me off.”

The tension in the room decreases, the old demon laughs. Sam runs his hands up over his face and down through his hair.

“Lilith will be—” Bela starts.

Sam cuts her off, glares, “I’ve done enough for right now.” He’s coal-burn tired, still reeling from the way the blood made him salivate.

(Missing Dean like he’s lost a limb.)

“Ah,” the old demon says, “let the boy be. He’s recruited Azazel’s followers, put the fear of the devil back in his subjects. Lilith’s supporters will soon follow.”

Sam leans back, thunks thoughtlessly against the wall, “Who else is there?”

“Abbadon, perhaps,” replies the old demon, “but she’s smart enough to bide her time.”

Nod, acknowledgement. Sam feels like waxing Hamlet-style about the unfairness of life, but taps it down like he always does. He reaches out, flicks on the TV, because he can.

(When he’d said goodbye to Dean, he was sure that was the last he’d see him for a long time. He should’ve known better. Should’ve thought about Dean’s penchant for planning dumb plans.)

“ _In a surprising twist_ ,” says the news reporter, lit by glaring camera lights, “f _amed mass-killer Dean Winchester, previously thought deceased, has stepped forward and turned himself in to the FBI, claiming he knows the answers to why the sun is no longer shining, but the world at large is still here_.”

Sam hits his head against the wall again, sighs out a, “ _Dean_.”

* * *

“It seems Lilith has set up home base in Maryland,” Bela is saying, as Sam scribbles uselessly on a piece of hotel stationary.

The younger demon interrupts, “Shouldn’t we be heading there, then?”

“I need access to Hell and a witch,” Sam says, suddenly, crumpling the paper up and tossing the pen on the bed as he stretches upward and stomps purposefully to the door, leaving demons with shock-wide mouths behind him.

“Wait,” Bela says, “ _Sam_.”

Sam’s too busy pulling out his phone.

Rowena answers on the third ring, just as Sam’s started down the hotel staircase.

“Samuel,” she greets, sounding winded, “what a lovely surprise. I’d thought maybe you were dead. Again.”

“Rowena,” Sam says, “could say the same about you.”

“Well, what can I do for you, Sam, as the world comes crumbling down around us?”

“Can you still do the spell to trap an archangel in Limbo?”

* * *

It’s raining when Sam arrives at the side-door to Hell. He coughs as he settles on shaking feet. It’s different from flying with an angel. More like sidestepping a couple of dimensions instead of being dragged through them in a snap. He brushes off his sleeves, settles his jacket, thinks about Jules Vern and wonders if this journey to the deep pits of Hell will yield help or the true world-end. Perhaps just a slide down a hill, a step back.

(Dean had understood, when Sam told him his plan, over the phone-call, the one he’d gotten, sitting somewhere labeled Top-Secret by those who didn’t know what a true secret was. Sam had felt a lot of guilt over things he’d done. This. This might top all of that. He could hear the undercurrent terror in Dean’s voice when he told him the plan. He knows what it’s like. Hasn’t stopped him though. Apparently he _can_ dig himself further and closer to the magnum fire.)

“Sam,” greets Meg, at the door, “or should I say, _King_.”

Sam shrugs, loosens his tie, and says, “You’d better have a way in.”

“What?” Meg says, pouting, “Can’t a girl want to catch up? How’s Clarence?”

“Alive,” Sam snaps, the kind, patient part of him huddling in the dark recesses of his mind, too turned around to figure it out.

Meg sighs, heavy, and gestures him through the heavy-iron door, and takes an interest in how Sam can cross the salt line without a wince.

(She’s different. Softer, somehow. Sam will never be able to forget how it felt when she was dragging his body around, though. Will never be able to separate that in his mind.)

“So,” she drawls, as Sam brushes a hole through the line to let her through, “power of Hell enough to get you through salt? Makes sense, I suppose.”

Sam looks toward the door at the bottom of the staircase, and says, sotto voce, “Not a demon.” It’s his mantra, as he surrounds himself with that black smoke. Says, even quieter, “Not yet.”

* * *

The Cage is different from the outside. It’s different not being alone. Or rather, not being with the company he is so used to.

(He’s been turning to comment on things like Dean’s at his shoulder instead of a demon, instead of a power-hungry turned soul.)

Rowena’s makeup is smeared. Sam’s not sure he’s ever seen her like that before. She greets him by grabbing at his arms and saying, “Well, let me have a look at you, Samuel.”

Sam knows who she’s thinking about. He’s almost sorry to have stepped up, if only because it brings so much pain for her, even if she doesn’t show it.

“Are you sure about this?” She asks, away from Meg’s ears, one of her hands strangle-tight on Sam’s elbow.

Sam stares at her, then glances down at his shoes, the dressy ones Dean bullied him into buying to complete his look. “No,” he says.

“Alright,” is all Rowena says in return, as she loosens her grip and pats his arm.

Lightning flashes, and thunder rumbles. Sam stares at the cage.

Meg returns, stands at his side, and neither of them says anything as Rowena goes about painting the symbols necessary. Sam rocks on his heels a bit, tucks his trembling hands in his pockets so Meg doesn’t see. (So he doesn't have to notice it.)

Everything about this is wrong in an unreachable way. The way he’d slowly realized what was happening, the first time he read _The Giver_ and felt sick for days afterward, sick enough to make Dean keep him home from school and feed him Kitchen Sink Stew and let him pick the channels.

_It’s the choosing that’s important._

This is a choice. It’s a choice made in desperation, but isn’t it always? Does it even matter?

(Sam hopes it does, even if he can’t _pray_ it does anymore.)

Fire reaches up around the Cage as Rowena’s chanting grows louder. Sam thinks about—

The amulet. Dean’s. If Dean never found it, it’s still under the backseat of the Impala. Chuck probably turned it off. Sam would’ve. Sam wonders where Dean left the Impala, now that he’s in custody. Wonders where Cas is at, how fruitless his quest has turned out to be, as he runs at windmills and hopes for monsters.

Maybe _this_ is Sam’s windmill.

* * *

Michael only babbles in Enochian. Sam stares at him, the ancient archangel crouched in an imitation of his half-brother, just beyond the line of fire.

At times, he’d been there too, causing pain, before He tired of Sam.

The Cage was meant to break whatever entered. Lucifer had spent so long there, he’d been accustomed to it.

But Michael—the Michael of this world, is a spindly, dragging, twitching spider leg. Sam can only hope that he’s broken just enough to stay away from Dean.

“Michael,” Sam says, after catching his voice from his too-dry-nerves throat.

He flinches. It’s enough.

Sam steps forward, calls again, “Michael.”

More muttering. Sam closes his eyes for a minute. Lets himself get lost in playing find the difference between the flames in front of him and the ones that always flicker behind his eyelids.

“Michael, Oldest,” Sam says, in Enochian—the best approximation a human throat can make, at the least, “Listen to Hell’s King.”

Michael freezes, darts terror-eyes at Sam, then startles back, pushing against the bars of the Cage.

“Please-no,” he pleads in the tongue of the archangels, “Lucifer, Brother of Light, please-no.”

It’s Sam’s turn to flinch away, and he takes a heavy, unplanned step back.

Chuck may like circular plots, but Sam doesn’t. It screams too much of _destiny_ and _meant-to-bes_.

“No-listen,” Sam says, gathering himself and stepping forward once again, “I am not Him, who brought the Light. Just the mud-vessel.”

Michael turns back to him, Dad’s-brand-of-serious eyes, and stares.

“Sam,” he says, breaking into English, “Sam Winchester. Samuel Winchester. The vessel.”

Sam nods, even though it hurts, even though he never wants to acknowledge that again.

(Just a _story_ to Chuck, just a weekly tune-in to a favorite show.)

Michael hums, and rocks in place, still crouched in a huddled mass, still staring at Sam’s soul.

“You were retrieved from the Cage,” Michael continues, “You are not here.”

“You’re not exactly in the Cage right now, then, are ye?” Rowena snaps, and Sam shutters his hope, because it’s not that he forgot her pain, it’s that he tried to ignore it. Tried to forget how this plan would hurt everyone he cares about.

Michael doesn’t seem to process that correctly. Sam doesn’t have time for this. Sam doesn’t have time for anything. The world is going quietly, silently into that dark, godforsaken night, and he doesn’t _want_ to go gently.

“Lucifer is dead,” Sam says, as if he doesn’t chant that in his head like it’s a stack of pills for every day of the week, “So is Gabriel. You’re the only one left.”

It’s supposed to feel too harsh coming out of Sam’s mouth, but it just tastes like truth. Michael’s eyes go wide and fearful, and he continues to cower.

“. . . Lucifer left,” Michael says, slowly, like he’s putting together the puzzle, the great, ever-expanding, box-example-less picture.

“And now he’s dead,” Sam says, “and Chuck, God, he wants to end the world. He’s already started the process. We need your help.”

Michael flicks out his tongue, licks crackle-dry lips that should never have belonged to him, and says, that horrific language spiraling out of his throat once again, making Rowena and Meg both flinch back, “Revenge upon the Father, the Creator.”

Sam doesn’t know what to say to that, brain going TV-static fuzzy. Michael looks at him.

“Vessel-Boy of the Earth,” he says, a eardrum-shatter sound, “I am beginning to understand Lucifer’s hatred. I will command the host for you.”

Michael twitches, still curled terror-tight, and for the first time, Sam feels something akin to pity.

“There is no longer a host to command,” Sam says, the harsh sound ripping through his throat, even as he thinks about trying to ease the blow. Even as he thinks about Dean, finally admitting that Dad screwed up sometimes. Even as he tries to separate the stories. Even as he reminds himself about free will.

Michael stares once more, searching for untruth in Sam’s words. The only acknowledgement of pain is a sudden, quiet inhale.

“You’ve been gone a while,” Sam says, English feeling oddly slick against the roof of his mouth, “things have changed.”

(But he’s not sure if they really have.)

* * *

On the way back, he tells Meg, commands, “Don’t mention these conversations to anyone else.”

“What do you take me for,” she says, a tone that’s supposed to be teasing falling flat, “a snitch?”

She pulls roughly on the chains dragging Michael along, and glances forward, to Rowena, before lowering her voice.

“I know where my loyalties lie, Winchester.”

Sam finds no dishonestly in her horror-show face, and trudges along without another word.

* * *

_I have not yet found Amara_

Sam blankly stares at the text from Cas, feeling something choked-up-tight try to lodge itself in his chest.

 _Dean is not answering_ :(

That much he knows. Every time he turns on the TV, his brother’s face shines back at him, startle-bright eyes looking back at paparazzi cameras, and yet another newscaster tells him about the deal Dean’s cut, and the scheduled speech.

(When they were young, high school and dropout, Dean clapped and stood for him when he bowed for the school play, and Sam thought it was the best thing in the world, because normally Dean scoffed at everything and anything like that.)

_How are things with you?_

He powers off the screen without a reply, tuning back in to Bela's explanation of the political rivals he’ll have to face before gaining full control over the demonic souls. Meg is there, paying attention for him. The old-gritting-teeth demon, who goes by _Tom_ has his eyes closed and twitches only when Abbadon is mentioned. The younger demon is darting eyes back and forth from the table to Sam.

He's sinking shoes tired and aching with everything wrong, when something tugs at his navel. Behind his breastbone, a fish hook digs into bone and yanks with the power of a soul-turned-Energizer-Bunny.

"I've got to go," he interrupts.

Bela and Meg both try to say something, and Tom's eyes jump open.

Sam's gone before they can say anything else.

* * *

When Sam manages to blink away his nausea from being yanked through dimensional y-axis points, he finds himself in a gray-grunge interrogation room.

"Dean?" He questions, shocked, as his mouth catches up with his eyes.

"Hey, Sammy," Dean says, smiling tiredly. He's dressed in a prison jumpsuit, handcuffs awkwardly forcing one of his arms behind him, while the other shakes out the match he'd lit the spell with.

Sam's moving before he knows what he's doing, lunging toward Dean, past the devil's trap, ignoring the guns pointed his direction. Catches Dean around the neck, tucks his face embarrassed-tight against him.

Dean brings up his free hand, crosses it bear-hug-strength across Sam's shoulder blades.

"You're such an idiot," Sam tells Dean.

And in all the precedents set by the court of Winchester, that's maybe all that should happen. They should break away, get over themselves. For whatever reason, Sam can't let go. Can't face the other people in the room.

(It's because it's the End. Because every other time, hope blinded the misery. Now, he's Hell's King, and it's not the denial drug that held his brain captive with every fight and death.)

Finally, they break away, still within the bubble of their world that exploded into being when Dean carried Sam out of a burning house.

Dean claps a hand to the side of Sam’s face, runs a thumb under his eye.

“When was the last time you slept?” He asks, shaking his head like he already knows the answer.

“Sleep?” Sam says, injecting tired-joke humor into his voice, “What’s that?”

Dean snorts and shakes his head, patting Sam’s face, then tugging a bit on the beard hairs in reach.

“Thought the beard was out,” he says, finally leaning back to relax the arm still attached to the bar on the table.

Sam smirks, meets Dean’s wet-sparkle eyes, and lets his face do the talking. Dean exhales loudly a few times, in the approximate realm of laughter.

“If you’re done, gentlemen, maybe we could get to the matter at hand?”

The annoyed question comes from the only agent who hasn't pulled her gun on Sam. She stands, arms crossed, glaring at them. Sam likes her almost immediately.

Sam nods, aquencense, and moves to take the seat next to Dean, who’s already lounging in his own. One of the guards looks questioningly at the woman, one hand on the handcuffs threaded through his belt.

“You can cuff me if it makes you feel better,” Sam offers, turning his wrists out atop the table. The woman shakes her head at the guard, who relaxes his stance as he returns his gun to his holster.

“So,” the woman says, “you’re the famous Sam Winchester.”

Dean grins and nudges Sam’s elbow, eyebrows waggling inch-worm style as he mouths ‘ _famous_ ’.

Sam stomps on his foot in retaliation, face as neutral as a seven on the pH scale. Dean cusses him out under his breath.

“Guess so,” Sam says, “I haven’t had the pleasure?” He offers his hand, trying to hide his uncertainty.

“Agent Perez,” she introduces, clasping his hand with railroad tie strength. “I used to work with Agent Henrickson, while back.”

It takes Sam a moment to remember, and then he does, and the squirming hookworm-fact of Lilith’s lurking presence turns his stomach.

“We did a seance,” Dean says, casually running a hand through his greasy hair, making it stick up, hedgehog spikes, “Henrickson says hi.”

Sam turns to catch Dean’s eyes and tilts his head. Dean offers a smug smirk. The tension in Sam’s shoulders from being surrounded by feds slowly ticks down until he can really feel the knots in his back. Of course, Dean’s got them all little-finger wrapped. It’s a little hard to argue with the sun going out.

Sam eyes the room’s occupants. Nods, runs a calloused hand down his face to rub at his beard.

“So,” he says, voice rumbling from his scratchy throat, “what’s going on?”

Agent Perez shares a look with Dean, and then moves to take the chair across the table from them.

“If everything Dean says is true,” she aims a pointed look at Dean, who immediately widens his eyes, innocently, “the entire world is at risk.”

Sam blinks, nods along, feels the rubber-band (it snapped when Chuck did) try to launch him sideways with how bizarrely wrong his life is.

“I’m inclined to believe him,” Perez continues, military-straight in her chair, hands clasped on the table.

(Sam’s inclined to hurtle himself into the abyss, but no one answered their calls, not Billie or her reapers. Proof of inclination is dependent upon proper action in his book.)

Flicking eyes up. Security cams. Sam wonders some things and worries some others.

“We’re—I’m doing my best to keep things controlled on the demonic level,” Sam explains, unsure of how far Dean went with his briefing, “but there are some other big players on the field.”

Dean turns, slant mouth, “Taken care of Lilith yet?”

Shameful look down to his knees, Sam answers, “No. She’s not actively attacking, and I don’t want to take her on her own terf if I can help it.”

Dean hums, a worldy lifetime trapped in the sound.

“Bela says Abbadon’s out there too, biding her time.”

“But you’ve got the crown,” Dean argues.

Sam shrugs, “Doesn’t mean there isn’t a power struggle. Killing Azazel helped.”

“Who else . . ?” Dean tapers off, his free hand rubbing up and down his other arm.

In that phone call, Sam didn't disclose it. It seemed like too much. Seemed too threatening. Too much like Sam had gotten greedy with power.

“Alistair’s dead,” he says shortly, “or gone, or whatever happens now. Ruby too.”

Dean’s eyes close, he breathes heavy.

 _Move on_ , as John Winchester would say. Sam’s too good at sticking around. He unglues himself from the struggle, stretching to find the important bits.

“I think,” he says, “something has to be . . . wrong. With The Empty.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, latching on to the topic, leech to bare leg, “all those guys, they should be long gone.”

“Cas got out,” Sam mutters, watching Agent Perez watch _them_ , eyes flicking back and forth, watching an ice cube slip out of hands, again and again.

“You think . . ?” Dean asks.

Sam forces the image of burnt-eyes, screaming pain, back into his boxes of Things Not to be Dealt With, and shakes his head. Says nothing.

“Well,” Agent Perez says, “if that’s all, Dean called you here not just to offer more proof of magic to us.”

Sam raises his eyebrows.

“Need your help writing my speech,” Dean says, arms crossed over his chest as he tries to tilt the bolted chair back without success.

* * *

Sam misses the live broadcast because Lilith brings her militia to him.

“Sam Winchester,” she calls, wearing a young girl’s body yet again, “come out, come out!”

He exits the hotel-base, feet shoved in cramped-tongue tennis shoes. Stares, unimpressed.

She goes on and on about strength and power and right-of-birth and the freedom of no longer being a seal. Sam lets her. Wonders how Dean’s speech is going. Feels icy heat burn through his soul. Holds up a hand.

(This time, _this time_ , there’s no blood fueling him. It’s only the aching, pothole paths through his soul where grace was supposed to go, the strength of the commitments to the throne he owns.)

Lilith drops, gone. Sam offers mercy. The others drop too, to their knees.

* * *

Sam kicks everyone out of his room so he can watch the news. As expected, Dean’s face is missing-poster-plastered across nearly every channel.

 _“Whether or not you believe in this kind of thing,”_ he says, blue-collar respect, “ _you gotta admit, the sun’s disappeared. Every finding in modern science suggests that we should be long gone. Yet, here we are_.”

Sam shrinks back against the headboard, pulling the battery cover off the back of the remote, then putting it back, again, again. Watches the camera flashes illuminate the patchy stage makeup Dean’s face is caked in.

 _“I can tell you this much. God isn’t on our side. He unleashed Hell upon the earth, without saving grace. And now, if we want to survive—if we want to rage against the fade into black—_ ”

Dean pauses, stares directly into cameras, just like they practiced.

“ _If you still believe in people, it’s time to stand together. I’m talking to every human being out there, protect each other. I’m talking to every hunter, teach everyone, protect those you can._

_“I’m talking to the vampires. The werewolves. The shapeshifters and djinn. I’m talking to the monsters, to those I used to consider my enemies. We have a greater threat, a reason to fight together, a fight for the right to live._

_“I’m talking to the witches, the immortals, the pishtacos. I’m talking to everyone with power, everyone who can fight._

_“I’m talking to the old gods. Yeah, you. You really gonna let God destroy the world you used to rule?_

_“I’m talking to the demons, the ones who still follow Lilith or Abbadon or whoever else thinks they can beat my brother. I can tell you this much. Out of everyone and everything I’ve ever met, there have been only two people to_ ever _injure God. His sister. And my brother. Choose your side wisely.”_

Sam can’t help the smile, the wobbly, nerves-driven smile that makes his cracked lips ache.

“ _I’m talking to everyone on this literally godforsaken planet. It’s time to stand together and say that we’re not going quietly.”_

* * *

He’s commanding the forces, reminding them, threatening them, when a shiver crosses his spine and sends his arm hairs goosebump-startling. Beside him, still wrapped in chains, Michael suddenly sits up, uncurling from the shaking mass he seems to prefer.

Sam turns to Bela, says, “Make sure they know the rest of the rules,” and disappears.

Jack stands at the destroyed doorway to the bunker. Sam stares, heart a rock song metronome.

“Jack?” He asks, voice breaking.

“Sam!” Jack says, turning and smiling with the best smile Sam’s seen in a long, long time.

One stumble step, another. Jack meets him halfway.

Sam squeezes with every ounce of strength in his body, chokes, can only say, “Jack.”

When he was six or so, Pastor Jim told him the story of Jesus meeting two disciples on the road to Emmaus, after he was crucified. Sam always wondered how they never recognized him.

He thinks maybe _he_ is the unrecognizable one, though Jack is the one back from forever death.

Sam finds himself on bended knee, clutching Jack to breastbone with shaking fervor.

“I’m alive,” Jack says, “Sam, I’m back.”

Sam shudders with a sudden excess of hope and love. Jack holds him up without a struggle.

Overhead, the clouds swirl. Sam feels the burning of souls throughout the earth. He eases up on his grip, leans back to rake his eyes up and down, certify that Jack is in front of him, burning with a mixture of soul and grace.

Jack smiles at him. Through watery, relief-love tears, Sam smiles back.

“Sam, I’ve got a plan. Me and Billie, we’ve got a plan!”

Sam nods, holds a hand to Jack’s alive-warm cheek, says, voice a crying-kind of rough, “I’d love to hear it.”

(And he would. He really, really would.)

**Author's Note:**

> do i think this is really what's going to happen in s15? absolutely not. this will be Immediately Jossed Without Question. do i want this to happen? ehhhhh, maybe part of it. did the goblin in my brain chant books!books!books! until i relented and sprinkled all those literary references in? you bet. 
> 
> anyway, i'm not gonna be able to watch s15 for a long time after it's done, so i figured, hey why not give myself some absolution before i cut myself off? anyway. 
> 
> more sam winchester content on the way babes 
> 
> your kudos, comments, bookmarks, and general interactions with this story are all precious and i love you
> 
> [on tumblr @sprinkles888](http://sprinkles888.tumblr.com)  
>  ****  
> [SPN sideblog @gen-spn](http://gen-spn.tumblr.com)


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